Two self-reference effects: The importance of distinguishing between self-descriptiveness judgments and autobiographical retrieval in self-referent encoding.

Abstract

This research suggests that difficulties in demonstrating consistent effects of the self on recall and in specifying the processes involved in self-referent encoding stem partly from a failure to distinguish between two self-reference encoding tasks: those requiring Ss to decide if a word describes them and those requiring Ss to retrieve a personal memory involving the word. Studies have treated these tasks as equivalent methods for exploring the memorial properties of self, but the present research shows that this assumed equivalence is in error. The authors show that much of the inconsistency in the self-reference literature is eliminated when studies are segregated on the basis of these two distinct self-reference tasks. The authors conclude that both trait-descriptive and autobiographical information about the self is available in memory, and that each can be addressed independently. Suppose a friend studying medicine told you that carpal tunnel syndrome is a nerve disorder characterized by weakness, numbness, and tingling in the thumb and first 2 fingers of the hand. You might or might not remember that fact. Suppose, however, that your friend's description of carpal tunnel syndrome reminded you of symptoms you had once experienced. Chances are you would have little difficulty remembering this description in detail. It seems almost self-evident that relating information to the self facilitates memory. Only recently, however, has the mnemonic effectiveness of self-referenc e been tested empirically. In one of the first demonstrations that information is well remembered when it is considered in relation to the self, Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker (1977) used Craik and Tulving's (1975) depth of processing methodology to examine the effects of various encoding strategies on incidental recall. Rogers et al. found that judging trait adjectives for self-descriptiveness (Describes